First Reply Once in a Thousand Lifetimes

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

'Golden Transect' - Gree Sundiver Shuttle
Corell

​

Truth be told, Jorus had gone into piloting because he was a terrible passenger, a truly shameful backseat driver. That was at the best of times; today the agitation ran far deeper. Every instinct commanded him to stump up there to the cockpit and take over from the Gree charter pilot at the Gree-calibrated controls of a Gree starship. Jorus held himself back from lethal stupidity by force of will. No ship he'd ever built or flown could safely get close to a yellow star, let alone take a dive into pure solar fire. He was, in several ways, out of his depth.

"Final notice to please don your goggles, honored passenger," said the droid flight attendant scuttling past. "The shutters will open momentarily."

The little vessel carried only a handful of passengers, all hurrying to don their safety goggles. An intangible but very real energy surged in the passenger cabin as Jorus, and others, turned in their seats to get their first view of the inside of a star. He found himself mumbling an ancient rhyme or prayer in Olys Corellisi, a half-forgotten thing that somehow reached across most of the last century with perfect clarity tonight. Not that there was night inside a sun.

 

[Toltec]

Jorus Q. Merrill

The Gree vessel was exploring something often not explored, nor often feasible by most interstellar travellers - the view of the inside of a star. The magnificence of the void's most luminous creatures, the grandiosity, was enough to put more than just a few credits in a pilot's pocket. It was enough to change a man's life. In this vacuum of chaos, entire cults and religions had been started for much less than what these travelers were paying to see today. Most clamored towards the front cockpit, near the captain, the best view port in the vessel. Despite the tinted shade the vessel provided to shield one's eyes, most people were squinting their eyes from the brightness. The fusing of atoms in the massive pressure of a hydrogen core was intense, one could surmise.

An arc of blue lightning struck within the core, not far ahead of the vehicle. The inside of a star was pure chaos, but this seemed abnormal even for their current surroundings.

THOOM.

Three more strikes of blue lightning, arcing towards the same general location not far ahead.

THOOM BOOM CRACKLE DOOM.

One last arc.

CRACKLE FIZZLE BOOM.

The silhouettes of five massive humanoid figures were hurtling through the gaseous, yellow cloud of atomic fusion towards the Gree vessel.

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

CRACKLE FIZZLE BOOM.

The silhouettes of five massive humanoid figures were hurtling through the gaseous, yellow cloud of atomic fusion towards the Gree vessel.

"Cheggi, look, space whales!"

Jorus' head snapped around so fast he figured his chiropractor would be driving a new speeder by Taungsday. Passengers stormed to the starboard bow, heedless of seat arrangements and drive equilibrium. Jorus felt only minimal shame in doing likewise as fast as his achy legs would take him. He hunched by a viewport.

Courtesy of ten thousand memories of turbolaser fire, the lightning phenomenon had been difficult to enjoy. The silhouettes out there were downright terrifying.

Oh, he'd certainly hoped to see some indication of star-native forms of life. He'd even drawn up half a notebook of first contact possibilities, but the droid had disallowed his gear at the airlock. He'd assumed a chance encounter down here would be with, what, a semi-sapient cloud of elemental fusion? Something alien beyond how most humans used the word?

But those huge silhouettes in the endless fire were definitely humanoid. And on an intercept course.

Jorus headed for the cockpit. You know, casually.

The Gree droid attendant spoke up loud enough for all to hear: "What luck, esteemed passengers! Forward and to the right, you'll see no fewer than five active stellar-core phenomena!"

Jorus shouldered past the droid, right to the cockpit hatch. "You see that, right?" he said to the Gree pilot. "Those could be hostile. Either way they're out of place and coming right for us."

The pilot raised a hairless eyebrow and gronked with finality. The shuttle arced gently to port, optimizing the passengers' view of the oncoming silhouettes.

The droid grabbed Jorus' elbow gently. "Please return to the viewing area, honored passenger."

Jorus shook off the grip. "You got comms options? At least waggle the wings or something."

The pilot and droid gronked to each other. The shuttle rolled a little, side to side, a wing-waggling hello.

 

[Toltec]

Jorus Q. Merrill

The closest of the five silhouettes was spinning legs over head towards the craft inside the solar mass, an abruptly landed on the hull of the ship, thudding off. A loud clang was heard throughout the innards as it bounced off and scraped, a brief flash of a pink humanoid face spotted, bewildering eyes piercing into the viewport before disappearing due to the crash course it had been set upon. Two more figures, also spinning in the fusion storm, were quickly intercepting the ship's path. As most of the occupants were panicking despite the pilot's attempts to keep everyone calm, a single passenger dressed in a ragged cloth parka placed his hand up to the edges of the window. As more passengers recoiled from the initial impact, this figure remained unwavering, his frame becoming apparently larger the bolder and more stoic he stayed.

A pink aura emanated from his palm, fingers outstretched on the viewport as the first silhouette spiraled out of sight and into the storm.

The second of the figures landed atop the ship with equally violent crashes, but were unable to leave marks upon the well crafted and futuristic vessel's hull. This one managed to catch on to the ship, as it's dark outline was finally revealed to the vessel's occupants as it sat directly in the middle of the ship's cockpit window. The mystery of what these figures were finally revealed.

"Is that a protocol droid?" One of the passengers gasped, staring out the window.

The figure was indeed. Probably an older series, the creature was still sparking with blue tangible energy similar to that of the observed lightning strikes, though this energy was now beginning to be obscured by the sheer violence of the stellar mass they currently inhabited. Heat, radiation, and the energy of pure fusion reactions was quickly tearing apart at this droid's fabricated body. Gray metal and sheathed cables were being pulled, melted, and destroyed as the circular eyes of the droid seemingly emanated fear and panic. It reached up with both hands, clenching fists, and looked as if it was about to demonstrate percussive maintenance upon the viewport as it stayed latched to the ship. The droid apparently was going to try to break in.

Before it could, the fusion storm made short work of the droid that had randomly landed upon a starship in the middle of a star. As it followed through with it's physical strike against the window, before it could even leave a mark, the droid's body was evaporated, gone as quickly as it had appeared, torn asunder by the extreme violence of the star's core.

Amid the woos, ahhhs, and gasps of the tourists, the large man with his hand pressed to the window would whisper "fascinating."

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

The sole upside to the passenger meltdown: no more hassle from the droid flight attendant about lurking in the cockpit hatch. The Gree pilot didn't appear to care just now. His tentacles flew over the controls to do...not much, as far as Jorus could tell. Maybe ensuring the dying droids hadn't done serious damage. Maybe just putting on a show. Apilot getting flashy in a crisis? Inconceivable.

Jorus shuffled back through the chaos toward the viewpoint that the droid had been pounding. He took a glancing blow from someone's handbag en route. The viewport looked undamaged. Others disagreed.

"Don't touch the window, it's going to break, you'll kill us all, so irresponsible-"

There was additional complaint. A Herglic matriarch, clutching the flight attendant, harangued a large figure in ragged clothes. Like Jorus, he was now in trouble for touching the viewports.

Toltec

 

[Toltec]

"I don't have tickets on me, no, I gave it to the guard at the station just like everyone else here, si-er, ma'am."

The figure's voice was metallic, but his ragged garb was clutched tight as if some sort of ceremonial robe. Upon closer inspection, it did look as if it was a bit.. regal, perhaps fifty years ago. There was embroidery upon it that seemed pretty ancient and forgotten by even the most esteemed scholars among this cadre of the elite. The figure clutched at his cloth wrappings, hiding his larger framed visage and recoiling his body from the matriarch.

Several onlookers were already fishing their tickets out of their bags, waving them the air in protest and suspicion at the stranger. The matriarch was equally displeased, snarling and reaching down for a pair of electrocuffs.

Pivoting from the viewport, the stranger became agitated. "Please, I bought my ticket, you took my ticket, I don't have my ticket, I have nothing to do with whatever that was. My friend here," a strong metal hand clasped Jorus Q. Merrill 's shoulder. "He'll tell you, we bumped into each other in departures, no? This is just a misunderstanding, you have to believe me." Shoulders shrugged to adjust his bindings, the massive figure clutching his hood closer together between the pinch of his fingers. He motioned to Jorus again, trying to be as passive as possible in the face of a snarling massive flight attendant, amid a crew very disturbed at the "attack" they had just suffered underway. His green eyes, under the black void of his hood, were suggesting strongly with either a "come ON" or a "help me" inference.

Jorus Q. Merrill

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

Never let it be said that, in the eternal game of Cops and Randos, Captain Jorus Quentin Merrill sided with the cops.

His feeling of affinity toward this much-persecuted droid or armored organic was immediate and substantial. He puffed up his chest, which didn't count for much at his age and size. There'd been a time when he twirled a Mandalorian shell gun like a baton. These days the most exercise he got was a long walk when he landed too far from the cantina. So the chest puffing didn't go so hot. He was tempted to speak the lingua franca of the indignant upper middle class — don't you know who I am — but there were better and classier options.

Well, better anyway. Class was in the eye of the beholder. A bit of a swashbuckle, maybe.

"'Scuse me," he said, and slipped between a couple folks who didn't appreciate that. Affronted bleating resulted. He abandoned the droid briefly and stepped back through the cockpit hatch.

He'd made his bones off exactly one instinct: knowing what button to push to go thattaway. He reached past the Gree pilot and pushed a Gree button.

A Gree solar sail, the shuttle's emergency option, unfurled and caught Corell's internal currents. This particular current pointed straight forward the surface of the star. The shuttle bucked like a constipated rathtar and accelerated up at a wild angle. The inertial dampeners protested sparkily under various panels. Gravity tripled at a thirty-degree angle. Starfire rushed past the viewports. Nearly everyone, Jorus and the Herglic matriarch included, hit the deck and slid.

Toltec

 

[Toltec]

Toltec stood, for a split second, as the artificial gravity went wonky and sent everyone flying or sliding. The droid, who was trying to hide his metallic appearance without much success, only slight lurched second for a moment as his magboots kept him sealed to the deck. The Gree had made a stellar starship that wasn't immune to the gravitation forces of the starr - naturally. Typical Gree chaos design. Toltec's robes went flying, revealing the entirety of his sleek and slender steel frame, his large shoulders bunching. The droids eyes followed the Matriarch as the chaos unfolded, the data core behind it processing the ensuing geometry of each object's spatial rotation within the nearest ten yards, sequentially.

And then he released his magboots, letting the artificial gravity do the rest of the work for his already heavy frame. His body would crash against the Herglich's face as they both collided against the separator wall, near the closest bathroom.

"Watch out!" Toltec yelled, crashing onto the Herglich's head.

He would look down, hoping the Herglich was either dead or knocked out.

Jorus Q. Merrill

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

Currently wedged between row seats, Jorus winced in sympathy as the droid — definitively a droid at this point — crunched into the complaining Herglic. The complaints ceased at once.

A groaning hush fell across the shuttle. It yawed: at this angle, viewports displayed some of the base connectors of the exotic-matter sail. One snapped, lashed against the hull, rang it like a gong. The Gree pilot puked something halfway intelligible over his tentacular shoulder. He was fiddling with a bronze device like an industrial grade sextant, unconnected to the shuttle and notably older. He was, Jorus realized, unstrapping.

Jorus pried himself free against the weight of gravity. The shuttle ascended fast and at an angle its designers had only casually contemplated. It might get out of the star; it might not.

That sextant-looking thing had the vibe of a life raft.

"Oh no you don't—"

The Gree pilot twisted something just as Jorus lurched his way. The air tore, right in the hatch of the cockpit. Jorus caught a glimpse of somewhere very much else. A wind inside the shuttle sucked purses and datapads into a hyperspatial void. The Gree coward stepped inside—


Toltec

 

[Toltec]

It was a matter of hours, the next few seconds felt like. The surprised face of the droid as he stepped off the Herglich guard to grab the ankle of the Gree pilot. His other hand reaching towards anything, absolutely anything that could hold his weight down to prevent being sucked into this spatial rift that had just ripped. A cloak. A foot. A stranger? His hand fumbled around, grabbing the wrist of the stranger Jorus Q. Merrill from just earlier. Sheer terror gripped the emotional expressions of the metal creature as he braced against the pulling force of the spatial void, unaware of what it was.

Everything seemed to slow down, and despite the droid's already distorted sense of asyncronous galactic time, it only seemed to go slower.

He gripped the Gree.

The Gree attempted to yell, but no sound emanated.

He gripped the stranger's arm.

The void popped with a flash of bright light, and Toltec disappeared from the shuttle and into the rift, possibly with the other two.

Jorus Q. Merrill

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

Even, Jorus falls into the rift; odd, he stays on the Golden Transect.

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

The ship lurched, the hyperspace rift belched, and Jorus lost his grip on the nearest seat. Minus a couple fingernails, he tumbled after Toltec and the Gree.

Now, he'd done his share of mynockshit in hyperspace, walked tall and so forth, but surviving hard vacuum was well outside his paranormal skillset, even back in his prime. Out of habit he wore an old AEL Dragonskin insulated worksuit under his clothes when he went anywhere particularly risky. As vacuum slapped him in the face, a quartet of memory-metal hoops snapped up around his head like bear traps. They carried domelike membranes that connected into a double-layered helmet of sorts. He jammed his hands in the insulated mittens in his pockets. They mated up to his sleeves more or less as designed, but the whole affair leaked like a sieve. Brand new, a Dragonskin could give you thirty minutes of cold, cold air. He guessed he had maybe ten until asphyxiation or decompression got him.

But on the other hand, hyperspace was very pretty.

He turned his attention to the droid and the Gree, his co-floaters. The latter was struggling to put on a helmet without letting go of the sextant-looking thing. Jorus was just close enough to grab the Gree's flailing foot and hang on.

The Dragonskin had a tiny little comm. Jorus poked it with his tongue.

"Not a bad view, eh?"

 

[Toltec]

Toltec's spectrometers were engorged and were almost popping out of his head. Organic mindles, though more feeble and slow, were better to adapt to these situations simply because they didn't comprehend or understand exactly what was going on. Toltec felt as if he was absorbing everything, blunted upon him as a storm does a levee. His sensors were going absolutely nuts, but his hand had such an iron tight grip around the two strangers - moreso the Gree that had put them in this predicament. He began pulling both of them towards him, as his hood was thrown off in the chaos and the visage of his metal chassis was fully visible now.

His face blew up in bright lights upon a black, voidless background. WHERE ARE WE GOING, he shouted, the volume of his external speakers attempting to travel across the nothingness of their environment. The Gree was freaking out, fumbling, staring at the droid wide eyed. No matter how green Toltec got, however, the tentacled sapient did not appear to be in receipt of Toltec's communication.

"Not a bad view, eh?"

Toltec heard the comms unit batter off, and immediately adjusted his radio frequency emissions onto the same VHF band. Toltec's face didn't light up this time, his just simply beamed a signal direction into the humanoid's comms. In space, sound can't travel. Radio waves can, though. Very well, and very fast. There's no interference at all.

"Click the sextant three notches to the right."

Jorus Q. Merrill

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

The worksuit comm relayed Toltec 's voice as a tinny little squeak. Despite the gravity of the situation, Jorus choked out a laugh. He fought his way up the struggling Gree's leg analogue. The three of them were just about entangled now, in ways none of them probably found enjoyable. Preferable to drifting away, though. No relativistic shields, no nav screens...from disintegration to time warp, anything could happen. He found himself grateful for the droid's otherwise unsettling grip. The sextant had to be loosely comparable to a miniature hyperdrive. You didn't get too far from the hyperdrive, just as a matter of common sense.

He got a grip on it despite the Gree pilot's best efforts. The bronzed metal was bitter cold through his worksuit's insulated mittens. There'd been a time when he could have wrested it from the pilot entirely. He had to settle for joint custody.

The central wiggly pivot shifted exactly this many notches to the right:

 

[Toltec]

In the nanoseconds before the final click, Toltec realized he had overcame the situation with his superior droid mind. Rather, the minds within he had collected. As an Abominor, his long life could be summed up in very short order - rather than expanding his body mechanically, as many Abominor had, he expanded his mind by collecting those of others. Inside this collection were several galactic mathematicians. None of them were Gree. But several of them had come to the conclusion, within those few lightning moments with the amplified processing speed that was Toltec's infrastructure, that they needed three clicks on that sextant, to the right, to return the trio to the nearest realspace galactic gate, pylon, or anchor - whichever was closest.

His hands were completely full, with no way to manipulate the sextant without letting go of the Gree or the humanoid. Though completely confident he could work the sextant on his own, successfully, he couldn't risk letting go of the humanoid nor the Gree. Stuck, he was, the one player who was sure he could manipulate the device in this situation.

Unfortunately, the sextant stopped at two clicks. Toltec opened his mouth to scream as he realized the third click would never come.

Click

Bzzzt

Pop

The white was blinding. It seemed as if they had inverted the entire Galaxy. The three silhouettes of the trio erupted from a rift into a white galaxy, overwhelming to Toltec's photoreceptors.

The Gree began to spazz, freakishly and chaotically erupting into violent motions in Toltec's iron grip like a freshly caught fish. Toltec closed his searing receptors, blasting the humanoid in his other hand with the previous VHF wave, unsure what was happening, but giving his best guess.

Due to the weirdly otherness of wherever they were, only this many words of Basic would try to make it to the human.

Spoiler: Full sentence

"ONE FULL ROTATION COUNTERCLOCKWISE, THEN THREE CLICKS CLOCKWISE, HURRY, IT IS BURNING."

Jorus Q. Merrill

 

[Toltec]

"ONE FULL ROTATION <static>, THEN THREE CLICKS CLOCKWISE, HURRY, IT IS BURNING."

Jorus Q. Merrill

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

Now, you gotta understand that Jorus Merrill had been everywhere. Back and forth through the Deep Core and the Hard Roil and the Kathol Outback and the Maw, out an assortment of breach points to half the companion galaxies, crisscrossing the Unknown Regions, all of it.

Nothing scared him like Otherspace. He'd been exactly twice and both times he'd vowed never, ever again. Fucking nightmare dimension crammed with black holes and antimatter pockets and insectoid fanatics on undead biomechanical starships and—

Dark matter icebergs.

A translucent surface crunched into the three of them. Still in Toltec 's grip and clinging to the sextant, he scrabbled against it uselessly with his available limbs.

His mittens' seals were leaking clouds of sweat-vapor air, and his wrists were cold. His heart pounded commensurate with decompression. The patchy signal barely registered. He got a grip on some unnameable part and twisted it around in a way that might or might not correspond to the droid's directions. His mittened hand slipped on alien metal. Click, click—

 

[Toltec]

Click

Bzzzt

Pop

The trio was sucked into another bland white rift.​

Spoiler: Where did they go?

Something was terribly, terribly wrong.

The trio erupted back into Otherspace, a massive black mass similar in shape to an iceberg above them. The gravity distorted the stark white around them, Toltec's metal chassis seemingly beginning to stretch like raw clay. His eyes were wild like an animal - despite being a droid and more suited to survive this situation, it didn't seem like any of them were making it out at this point. Toltec felt the growing mass nearing them, the greater pull of gravity beginning to compress his body. He clamored quickly for the humanoid and the sextant, the Gree in his other hand continuing to flail.

Snap.

Enough of this, time to end it. Toltec brutally snapped the arm of the Gree he was holding onto as it began screaming. It was weird. Toltec's audio receptors were picking up the screeching, despite it seeming as if they were still in some introverted spacial pocket. Gripping the neck of the Gree, Toltec threw it's broken body further into the massive iceberg-like monstrosity they seemed to be hurtling towards.

And within yoctoseconds, his green eyes flared in the human Jorus Q. Merrill direction. Jorus, in the grips of a frenetic large droid, was about to be in the fight for his life. His grip tightened, tempting to break Jorus's arm, struggling to bring him close to rip the sextant from his hands.

But it seems the black void of the spatial iceberg was not done with them, as tendrils of darkness across the white began to tear at Toltec's body, keeping him from tearing further at Jorus.

 

[Toltec]

Toltec's hand let go of Jorus, sinking into the pitch black.

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

Jorus' left humerus cracked like a mildly stubborn egg. Between that and the death of the Gree, a new kind of panic set in, more immediate than the weirdness around them. Space weirdness, he could handle. Grappling with a strong, coordinated, and frantic droid of unknown purpose and capabilities, not so much. Not at his age.

The pain of the broken arm cleared his head, punched clarity through the hypoxia. Resolving the grapple helped with clarity too. He had, conservatively, minutes to live. The Gree sextant hadn't saved them and he didn't have the first clue how to operate it; only the droid did.

He had another option, one he was always reluctant to exercise: after the better part of a century as an instinctive astrogator and Warden of the Sky, he might not be able to lift a pebble or hop more than a few inches off the ground, but his relationship with hyperspace was still close and friendly. He could, in an emergency, make a jump. He'd never succeeded in doing that from Otherspace, but that was a long, long time ago, wasn't it. Life or death, no better choices...why the hell not.

He dug deep, got in touch with the Force, and did not ask nicely.

The white void shuddered, or maybe that was just his eyes threatening to implode. Otherspace stretched into an inverse of a hyperspace jump—

—and then reversed into familiar starlines.

All this had started at the star Corell. Now, far away dimensionally but a very short distance as the superluminal crow flies, hyperspace dumped Jorus, Toltec , the free-floating Gree sextant, and fifty agitated tons of dark matter into low orbit of the planet Corellia. Which promptly went ballistic. Most orbital trade zones are, by and large, not designed for dark matter meteor showers that don't show up on sensors but do show up in your flight path the hard way.

Falling through panicked ships toward his onrushing homeworld, Jorus tongued an SOS on his helmet com in ways he was probably going to need to explain to his wife.